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Dr Robbin Laird, Shaping a Way Ahead for Australian Defence: The Perspective of Malcolm Davis, 6 October 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) During my current visit to Australia in support of the 27 September 2023 seminar, I had a chance to visit with my colleague Malcolm Davis. Dr. Davis is a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra and has focused a good deal of attention in the recent past on the importance for and the need to develop Australian sovereign space capabilities as part of the way ahead for Australian defence policy. There has been significant concern within defence circles in Australia about the government releasing a hard-hitting defence review which called for enhanced defence capability relevant to dealing with the challenges in the Pacific and then the failure to increase defence spending. We started there in our conversation. Davis made it clear that we are in a very difficult period of history in which Australia needs to enhance its capabilities both to protect its sovereign interests and to work with allies in the region. According to Davis: “The DSR talks about the strategic outlook as being much more adverse and uncertain, but then does nothing really to address that threat into it within a reasonable timeframe. “We seem to still be locked in the sort of paradigm and mindset that we have embraced really since the 1980s. We have a slow, steady capability acquisition process that takes 10 or 20 years to deliver new capabilities. “This is simply not relevant to the threat environment in which we now exist.” He warned: “We haven’t got ourselves into a mindset that would be more suitable for what might be called a pre-war period. It’s not just about capabilities in terms of hardware; it’s also about sustainment, mobilization, and readiness. “All of these capabilities are a national level challenge, not simply for the ADF to deal with. Issues such as onshore oil refineries to produce fuel for vehicles, or ships or aircraft or the hardening of key critical infrastructure against kinetic and non-kinetic attack are significant tasks which need to be addressed. “Strategic risks for Australia are growing not simply because of the actions of Beijing and Moscow, but because of the inability of Western capitals and Western leadership’s to respond to these challenges as well.” We discussed the importance of leveraging new industrial technologies associated with the 4th industrial revolution to rebuild the Australian manufacturing sector and to do so as part of a larger allied effort to shape a 21st century arsenal of democracy. We have seen a very robust arsenal of authoritarianism in operation in Ukraine which has challenged the West to rethink its manufacturing capabilities, many of which have been outsourced to China. Dr. Davis underscored the need to build for the kind of strategic resilience which Australia will need in the event of protracted conflict. The wars of choice so called were fought far from Australian shores and the West collectively built a support structure uncontested by a major power. That simply is not the case when facing major authoritarian powers. The point is rather simple: the DSR has not lead to any evident actions by the government to address resilience. Davis expressed concern that the delay in actions on shipbuilding which are being pushed to next year by the government are being done largely for budgetary reasons. The government may be waiting until they have a better sense of the economic situation next year and its impact on the budget before making any further defence procurement decisions. Dr. Davis has done a lot of work on the way ahead to shape an Australian national space capability and its importance for Australian sovereignty. He has been an advocate for the importance of having sovereign launch capability. But he sees the current government retracting from the past government’s efforts to build a national space policy, and such capabilities are crucial for the kind of sovereign capabilities which the DSR underscores as well. The discussion with Dr. Davis reminds me of a note which an Australian colleague sent me during my time here. He wrote: “I think there’s a strong case to discuss preparedness more than capabilities now.”

Dr Robbin Laird, ISR, Counter-ISR, C2 and Multi-Domain Strike, 6 October 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) The featured photo is a slide from Jovanovich’s presentation at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation Seminar. One can conceive of multi-domain strike over an extended operational area by building on a virtual revolution in the relationships among ISR, counter-ISR and C2. The dynamics of change involving ISR, Counter-ISR and C2 is obviously a major subject on its own but it is a central one to understand how a distributed force will generate multi-domain strike in areas of tactical and strategic interest. The intersection of these subjects has been one which the Williams Foundation has addressed in some of the presentations in past seminars. For example, then AIRCDRE Phillips who is now Air Marshal Phillips, Chief of Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance, noted in a 2019 Williams Foundation Seminar: “Earlier we built a dedicated single network connection for a specific task, such as providing targeting information to the platforms involved in a specific operation…With the new technologies and capabilities, we are now reusing networks for multiple purposes and making sure that they can adapt to the changing con-ops as well.” “We are seeing integration of the networks and the integration of the information management services and then the dual nature of the applications on top of those integrations. Rather than building a single purpose intel common operating picture, we are now capable of building an integrated intelligence and battlespace management common operating picture for the use of the combat forces engaged in operations.” In other words, “we are building an adaptable network of networks. In traditional networks, when data is brought in from a dedicated system, it needs to be repurposed for other tasks as needed.” Put in other terms, the “networked” force was built around platforms that would use networked information to create desired and often scripted events. But the C2 and ISR revolution we are now facing is reversing the logic of platforms to infrastructure; it is now about how flexible C2 and ISR interactive systems can inform the force elements to shape interactive combat operations on the fly. That is, the new capabilities are enabling tactical decision making at the edge and posing real challenges to traditional understandings of how information interacts with decision making. It is about learning how to fight effectively at the speed of light in order to achieve combat dominance. And these new capabilities are providing a real impact on force development, concepts of operations and force training as well. At the 27 September 2023 seminar, the enablement of the force to cross-operate, to do third-party targeting (which is a hallmark of fifth generation aircraft by the way) and to be able to use ISR to deceive the enemy as well as to guide operation actions to deliver meaningful strike for the desired “proportional effect” was the assumption underlying the notion of expanding the way ahead for multi-domain strike. Or put in other words, the dynamics of change involving ISR, Counter-ISR and C2 are part of the multi-domain strike enterprise. With the sensor revolution, not only are sensors much smaller but they proliferate through the operational force. If one operates a dedicated ISR platform, the range of tasks which that platform can do now compare to the past is truly amazing. The case of the Triton is a case in point of what it can see, what it can sense, what it can communicate and what it can target. And sensors can operate from a variety of platforms as integral elements of dedicated modular payloads, as we are seeing on the new maritime autonomous systems. But it it not only seeing the battlespace writ large, it is the ability of the tactical combat force or cluster to have at its service incredible ISR assets given the dynamics of change associated with sensor sets. And associated with this is the ability of decentralized C2 to operate a force with mission command which by being distributed enhances its survivability but can reach out to other platforms and work with such platforms to deliver the multi-domain strike which the seminar has focused upon. But not discussed at the seminar is the other aspect of the ISR revolution, what might be called counter ISR. In an interview I did earlier this year with a senior commander in the Pacific, he underscored the importance of counter-ISR in providing operational deception giving the force greater ability not only to survive but to find the choke points where multi-domain strike could have its most decisive impact. The mix of C2, ISR and counter-ISR was described by this senior commander as follows: “The higher headquarters may have access to better information and when it does it needs to have the ability to reach out to the tactical level to tell them to do or not do something associated with the larger political and strategic picture.” He felt that they were making significant progress in commanding a distributed force, which is a core element of shaping a force capable of deterrence in the Pacific. “We are capable of commanding from various locations and can be able to see and understand how to command in the battlespace dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, thousands of personnel. We are capable of seeing, understanding, and deciding what is going on in the battlespace, and tracking the enemy force using exquisite means way beyond a grease pencil and a radio call. We can and do so through links and sensor from the sea floor to the heavens.” Holding all this together is not only assured command and control but the tissue of ISR systems enabling distributed fleet operations and adding the key element of deception through various counter-ISR systems as well. In effect, fleet distribution built on a kill web effects infrastructure is being combined with what me be called a wake-a-mole operational capability. You can’t target me, if you can’t find me. The force is being distributed for survivability, but the joint force has focused considerably attention on a core capability which many cubical commandos have ignored – namely the ability of the force to become very difficult to target when on distributed operations. In my discussion with this commander, he indicated that one of highest priorities for ongoing development and funding is what he calls “counter-ISR” capabilities. As he put it: “That is why counter-ISR is the number one priority for me, to deny the adversary with to high confidence in his targeting capabilities. I need to deceive them and to make a needle look like a needle in a haystack of needles. It is important to have the capability to look like a black hole in the middle of nothing.” This particular interview put together the relationships among C2, ISR and counter ISR for a distributed maritime force quite succinctly. And at the seminar, a number of the presentations provided insights with regard to the dynamics of change in the ISR and C2 areas. Jake Campbell, Northrop Grumman Australia, at the last seminar discussed the importance of having layered ISR to allow for both the strategic and technical operational visibility necessary to make rapid, timely and effective decision making, notably for a distributed force but which would allow for strategic C2 as well. In his presentation to the 27 September seminar, he highlighted the challenges of providing the kind of ISR which is needed in a contested environment for net-enabled weapons. Actually, Jake was the only speaker who use this term but the multi-domain strike being discussed was built around net-enabled weapons or put in other terms third party targeting where a weapon launched for land, sea, or air could then be targeted from somewhere else. And that clearly is only going to work if you have accurate targeting information that comes from your ISR capabilities and a correct decision made by the shooter. He argued: “Within the ADF we really need to get our minds around the problem of doing such targeting in a degraded environment.” He noted: “The ability to generate a 24/7 target quality information, perhaps over some weeks, so that operational commanders have flexibility to generate a strike at the time and place of choosing is going to be challenging, but it’s the demand. And as you’re getting closer to those strikes, you have to have the ability to maintain what I call a chain of custody.” “You’re going to need to have eyes on that target with high fidelity target quality information and have the ability to communicate that to the weapons when they are fired.” Jake Campbell presents at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation Seminar. Triton is a key capability which Northrop Grumman is working with the RAAF for the ADF ISR and T capabilities. Campbell noted Triton has can provide data outside of the adversaries weapons engagement zone but also provide a range of data which will allow the ADF to make more effective targeting decisions with the reach and range of Triton’s onboard sensors. This reminded me of a comment made to me when visiting Jax Navy a few years ago. I asked a Triton operate: “What happens when your system is targeted?” His answer was direct: “Well I can see weapons at a distance few can match. I have a jet engine so I move and maneuver.” Campbell noted that the U.S. Navy and its use of the the Minotaur fusion engine is of significance in how the U.S .Navy is integrating ISR information across the force.He raised this in the context of discussing the involvement of the Triton surrogate in a Northern Edge exercise. “We operated the Triton surrogate, which is it’s a test platform that we put all the Triton sensors on, in the Northern Edge exercise, in a maritime strike scenario, where the goal was to generate a 24/7 maritime Common Operating Picture to be able to provide target quality information for the commander and then generate strike options against representative threats but to do so outside of the adversary’s weapons engagement zones of significance. “In contrast to other platforms, Triton sensors are actually able to operate and function well outside of the adversary’s weapon engagement zones right now and we are working on an ongoing basis to evolve this capability. And the height and perspective of Triton is an important factor in being able to so. “But the other thing that came out of the exercise was the importance of data fusion. There’s a system that was used in this exercise called Minotaur. Minotaur is a data fusion system that allows multiple aircraft and ships to share the network information. “It is a data fusion engine by which users can access information from whatever terminal they are on as long as you’re on the Minotaur Web. Triton and P-8s have Minotaur on them as part of their capability. And the U.S. Navy is headed full steam down the Minotaur pathway. It’s important for the ADF to get their head around what Minotaur brings to the fight and how we plug into it.” In an interview I did a few years ago, I discussed Minotaur with the then head of the US Navy’s Maritime Patrol Reconnaissance Enterprise. According to Rear Admiral Garvin who was the head of the enterprise at the time: “The Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance aviator of the future will be well versed in the synergy inherent in both manned and unmanned platforms.” “The unblinking stare of a Triton enhances the Fleet Commander’s MDA and understanding of an adversary’s pattern-of-life by observing their movements in the optical and electromagnetic spectrum.” Slide from Campbell’s presentation at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation Seminar. “Moreover, Triton serves as a force multiplier and enabler for the P-8. Early in Triton program development, we embraced manned and unmanned teaming and saw it as a way to expand our reach and effectiveness in the maritime domain.” “One key software capability which empowers integration is Minotaur.” “The Minotaur Track Management and Mission Management system was developed in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Minotaur was designed to integrate sensors and data into a comprehensive picture which allows multiple aircraft and vessels to share networked information.” “It is basically a data fusion engine and like many software capabilities these days, doesn’t physically have to be present on a platform to be of use.” “These capabilities ride on a Minotaur web where, if you are on the right network, you can access data from whatever terminal you happen to be on.” (See chapter six “an ISR-empowered force” in my co-authored book entitled: A Maritime Kill Web Force in the Making: Deterrence and Warfighting in the XXIst Century.) The Navy experience working with ISR was also significant to the perspectives of WGCDR Marija Jovanovich. In particular, she talked about her work with Pete “Two Times” Salvaggio, Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC), Maritime ISR (MISR) Weapons School, Department Head (DH), MISR & EP-3E Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) at Resolute Hunter. The WGCDR made it very clear that the work of “Two Times” and of the Navy led Resolute Hunter expressed her core emphasis on the expanded role for ISR in shaping any multi-domain strike enterprise. And in this context, she is one of the few people discussing the subject which highlighted the new innovative role in the Navy of what they call MISR officers. WGCDR Marija Jovanovich presenting at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation seminar. In an interview I did with “Two Times” in 2020 (and later that year I went to Resolute Hunter), he explained what they were all about and what the WGCDR was advocating. “Kill chain is to find, fix, track, target, engage and assess. For the US Navy, the weight of effort has been upon target and engage. As “Two Times” puts it “But if you cannot find, fix or track something, you never get to target.” “There is another challenge as well: in a crisis, knowing what to hit and what to avoid is crucial to crisis management. This clearly requires the kind of ISR management skills to inform the appropriate decision makers as well. “The ISR piece is particularly challenging as one operates across a multi-domain battlespace to be able to identify the best ISR information, even it is not contained within the ISR assets within your organic task force. And the training side of this is very challenging. Slide from Jovanovich’s presentation at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation Seminar. “That challenge might be put this way: How does one build the skills in the Navy to do what you want to do with regard to managed ISR data and deliver it in the correct but timely manner and how to get the command level to understand the absolute centrality of having such skill sets? “Two Times” identified a number of key parameters of change with the coming of MISR. “We are finally breaking the old mindset; it is only now that the department heads at NAWDC are embracing the new role for ISR in the fight.” “We are a unique organization at NAWDC for we do not own a platform. And the MISR school has both officers and enlisted in the team. We are not all aviators; we have intel specialists, we have cryptographers, pilots, crewmen etc. “Aviators follow a more rapid pace of actions; non-aviators do not have the same pace of working rapidly within chaos. Our goal at MISR is to be comfortable to work in chaos.” “Another part of the shift is to get recognition that ISR does not SUPPORT the force; it is essential element of the combat capability for the force to be able to operate effectively. It is inherent to the force; not external to it. “The kill web approach is about breaking the practice of correlating specific sensors with specific weapons; it is about shaping a much broader understanding of how to work sensor networks to deliver the outcome one is seeking. “Two Times” argued that the training within NAWDC to train MISR officers is not bad, but the big challenge is to work to break down habitual operational patterns of senior commanders, who really are not focused on how the ISR revolution is changing warfighting.” (See chapter six “an ISR-empowered force” in my co-authored book entitled: A Maritime Kill Web Force in the Making: Deterrence and Warfighting in the XXIst Century.) The C2 piece of all of this was discussed by Carl Rhodes in his presentation. He most recently was the director of RAND Australia and now director and founder of a consulting firm based in Australia, Robust Policy. In his presentation, he discussed the evolving C2 approaches which underlie multi-domain strike and which enable distributed operations but within a mission command context. He discussed the various new approaches to C2 underlying distributed operations. Two in particular stand out. The first is a kill web approach in which there are multiple ways to move information and to complete a weapons engagement. The second is the DARPA version of this which they call mosaic warfare. He argued that this approach was very adaptable and was based on an ability to have resource interchangeability including during execution of the strike. He argued that new C2 concepts require new systems and new doctrinal thinking. But I would argue that is clearly underway and has been achieved in some areas. But another part of his presentation leads nicely to the final presentation I will discuss here. Rhodes provided an interesting discussion of the Ukrainian experience in ISR and C2 and then considered its relevance to the Pacific theater of operations. But on his way to his conclusion on this subject he highlighted the question of how a space-based system, namely, Starlink has played a key role in typing together Ukrainian military efforts. Carl Rhodes presenting at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation seminar. He noted that: Starlink facts Over 4,500 satellites in orbit, more than 50% of all active satellites Eventual plans for 42,000 satellites Laser crosslink service is rolling out Ukraine employment C2 of aerial and maritime unmanned system Tactical communications Coordination of artillery fires Moving information around the battlefield He then underscored the advantages of LEO constellation over GEOs has been clearly demonstrated in a number of ways in the conflict: Lower latency Better anti-jam capability Less vulnerable to kinetic attack: it is a distributed system that degrades gracefully. Nick Miller, Optus Satellite and Space division, dealt with the space aspect of ISR and C2 and certainly reinforced both Campbell’s and Rhodes’s presentations. Here Miller talked about how Optus was shaping a way ahead to work with LEO operators to provide both the increased ISR layering Campbell talked about and the C2 for distributed operations that Rhodes talked about. The focus of his presentation was on “how LEO operations benefit government and defense organizations, and how we plan to integrate LEO and GEO capabilities into our own network for the future.” LEO constellations or networks have significant advantages for the creation of the layered ISR and C2 capabilities mentioned earlier by Campbell. As Miller noted: “Due to their proximity to Earth data transmission, time for latency are significantly reduced, allowing enhanced real time communication and decision- making.” The basic approach taken by Optus is to interweave their GEO satellites with other providers LEO constellations. Miller argued: “The advantage we have as Australia’s longest standing satellite operator is our agnostic ability to actually access and assess each of these technologies and its capabilities to determine the best fit for purpose for enterprise fit for government, and in some cases fit for defense. We see the advantages and disadvantages of each and how they best fold into a GEO network to provide interoperable coverage.” Nick Miller, Optus Satellite and Space Division, presenting at the Williams Foundation seminar 27 September 2023. He added: “The integration of these networks can also offer redundancy and resilience in the face of disruptions or fast changing environments. For instance, if you have a satellite network that becomes compromised, or faces issues such as jamming, the other satellite network can pick up the data to minimize downtime. “This type of redundancy allows for better support in longer term capability planning, or fast paced decision making when it’s required. When LEO and GEO satellite networks are integrated, critical data can also be efficiently routed between the two systems based on the specific requirements of the mission. High Priority data can take advantage of the low latency LEO connections while less sensitive time sensitive data can be relayed via GEO satellites.” Slide from Nick Miller’s presentation at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation Seminar. In short, the dynamics of ISR and C2 are shaping the foundation for the multi-domain strike enterprise. They are part of a kill web not just to be fitted into a legacy kill chain approach.

Dr Robbin Laird, The Multi-Domain Strike Enterprise: Building and Providing the Weapons, 6 October 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) Featured Graphic is from Ian Langford’s presentation. It will do little if one crafts the force for effective strike and does not work to ensure that the enterprise does not go Winchester much more rapidly than the duration of conflict. This is a major problem and at the first Williams Foundation seminar of 2023, the challenges of building a 21st century arsenal of democracy were discussed at length. The simple fact is that the United States and all of its allies have NOT built magazine depth. Each has had almost just in time delivery of weapons systems with very very limited supply. This is true for both precision and non-precision weapons. And then there is the key problem of having weapons mixes which allow the force to be able to operate throughout a prolonged operation. And almost assuredly this will not happen with the weapons production paradigm of the past twenty years. In a 2020 visit to Fallon at NAWDC, I discussed this problem ironically with the Navy Captain who is the acknowledged expert on TLAMS, the very weapon prioritized by the DSR. He warned against over reliance on such weapons alone. “A key point really would revolve around the weapons enterprise itself and how the fleet will be empowered by new ways to build out weapons arsenals and provide for adequate stockpiles for the force. That was the subject of conversation with Captain Edward Hill, the oldest Captain in the USN at sixty years of age. Because he goes back to the Cold War operating Navy, he can bring forward that experience to the return to the contested environment challenges facing the weapons enterprise. “Clearly, building adequate stockpiles of weapons is crucial. But also important is working a new weapons mix to ensure that one is not forced by necessity to rely on the most expensive weapons, and the ones that will almost always have a stockpiling issue, but to have a much more cost-effective weapons set of options. “As Captain Hill put it: “We need to get beyond golden bee-bee solution. We need to have a weapons barge come with the battle group that has an affordable weapons mix. We need $50,000 weapons; not just million-dollar weapons. We should have weapons to overwhelm an adversary with Joe’s garage weapons and not having to use the golden bee-bees as the only option.”[1] So simply buying TLAMS from the United States is not an answer to how the ADF will have adequate stockpiles of weapons in a crisis and in prolonged conflict. It is an input to a re-think but not a substitute for a rethink. If we are to have really an arsenal of democracy, we need to move beyond single production line production models. The United States needs to get on with sharing a production line for TLAMS in Australia. This is not just for Australia but the United States and various Pacific allies. It is about redundancy; it is about security of supply; and it is getting on with the key barrier the United States continues to have which is its bureaucratic interpretation of security requirements. And the Australian contribution could be significant to the collective allied rethink and redesign of a weapons enterprise. Namely, we need a new approach to building weapons and to do so in terms of something like standardization on the 155mm-artillery shell. I talked with a senior USAF officer earlier this year about this challenge and the opportunity to rebuild a weapons enterprise around standardization and multi-national production lines. This is what he had to say: “I want an 80% solution that is built about around two important criteria– the weapon or the cost per round, so I can buy a ton of them by the 1000s. And I can make them very easily. And I can keep up with wartime usage. So I don’t have the problems like we have in Ukraine, where I’ve expended all of them.” Australia is clearly focused on addressing these problems but it is early days. In the presentation by Ian Langford, formerly a senior Australian Army officer, and now with Lockheed Martin, he provided a slide which the way ahead for Australia in this area: How multi-domain strike fits into an evolving Australian deterrence strategy was provided by BRIG Langford at the March 2022 Williams Foundation Seminar. “Certainly, the ADF as a force for a medium power faces the challenge of deterrence of larger powers in the region. Here he noted:” To quote a former prime minister of Singapore, “How does a small fish in a pond of big fish become a poison shrimp?” How do we provide the kind of deterrence functions in a period where we are always at risk of being out escalated and how do you provide those shaping, or pre conflict, or competition effects? and are credible?” “BRIG Langford underscored the importance of decision superiority in shaping favorable outcomes. “It is about being able to generate relative tempo and superiority at certain points in the conflict that enable victory going forward.” And one could add – making sure that the ADF force elements are able to deliver such strikes with the right weapons, in the right numbers and the right places. AVM Gerry van Leeuwen, Head of the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordinance, provided the overview on the projected way ahead for the ADF in the weapons area. His group is within Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group within the Department. In his role, he is primarily responsible for the acquisition, sustainment, and disposal of all guided weapons and explosive ordinance for Defence and the delivery of associated joint force (effector) capability outcomes. Ian Langford, presenting at the Williams Foundation Seminar 27 September 2023. The AVM started by noting that the strategic direction of the effort is to shape a joint acquisition approach to the weapons area. And with the appointment of a three-star overseeing the effort, Air Marshal Phillips, structural change with the Department is under way to achieve this objective. He noted that the services will continue to sponsor weapons acquisition projects but the overall types and quantities acquired will be shaped by the new joint approach. In particular, he underscored, that the DSR highlighted the “need for long range strike, increased war, stock or inventory and the development of domestic manufacturing capabilities.” With regard to long-range strike, “we need to attack targets at greater range and hold our adversaries at risk at increased distance.” An example of the focus is upon the Army. “Our army has been challenged to reach beyond a notional 50-to-100-kilometer range and to beyond 500 kilometers in time and then out beyond 1000 kilometers.” AVM van Leeuwen underscored that the Ukraine war demonstrated the need to be able to enhance war stocks. He also noted the need to diversify sources of production in supply in this intriguing comment: “To use an analogy, it looks like everyone’s in the same buffet line. AVM Gerry van Leeuwen, Head of the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordinance, presenting at the Williams Foundation seminar on 27 September 2023. And if you’re the back of the queue, you better not be too hungry. We’re currently working with the U.S. on creative ways to accelerate FMS orders, and especially with regard to long range strike weapons. “And not surprisingly, those weapons are the same weapons in high demand by the U.S., given our common interest in the Indo-PAC region. But our relationship is strong and collegiate. The U.S. seems willing to work with us in that regard, but I would caution that if they sell advanced weapons to Australia, we sure as hell better be prepared to use them.” This in turn leads the challenge of logistics and sustainment. “Increased inventory brings with it logistical challenges like storage and distribution, maintenance, repair and overhaul, given the shelf life associated with limitations associated with energetics and environmental degradation.” AVM van Leeuwen then turned to the knotty challenge of Australian domestic weapons production. He noted that Australia is not starting from scratch. “We already manufacture a range of munitions from small arms to aerial bombs, and we do have manufacturing capabilities already in place.” But with regard to building on these capabilities and expanding domestic production capabilities, they are adopting a “crawl, walk, run approach.” “Our decision to build a domestic manufacturing capability is in part in order to build enhanced regional resilience in supply chains, especially when supply lines across the Pacific are degraded or denied in a time of conflict. But in the longer term, we will build a stronger sovereign industrial base here in Australia on an assumption that we’re working to a readiness window of 2026 or 2027.” He added: “We need to look at production rates beyond our domestic consumption and offer access back into the global supply chain that will involve certification, quality and security requirements. The industry needs to be prepared and be ready.” He mentioned three areas where the focus will be in the short to midterm: On the Standard Missile families; on the Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile; and with regard to 155mm artillery shells.[2] He then focused on the comprehensive nature of the challenge Australia faces in the weapons area: “As a DSR priority, we have been allocated an additional $1.5 billion over the forward estimates to make a total provision of $2.5 billion for domestic manufacturing war stock. Perhaps it’s the risk is not so much about the amount allocated but our ability to spend it and realize the ambitious plan over the next five years. “Another challenge we face is workforce. The job market is heavily contested and people with the right qualifications for certain jobs are increasingly hard to find. Attracting the required workforce to realize the ambition of domestic manufacture will be a significant challenge and represents significant risk to our overall success. People have choices and the cost of living is weighing heavily on the minds of Australians.” “The selection of sites where domestic manufacture will factor into things like population demographics and logistics, for example, transport lines and distribution hubs.” [1] Robbin F. Laird, Robbin, Training for the High-End Fight: The Strategic Shift of the 2020s (pp. 82-83), Kindle Edition.) [2] https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/Article/2169011/standard-missile/; https://www.kongsberg.com/kda/what-we-do/defence-and-security/missile-systems/nsm-naval-strike-missile-nsm/; https://www.australiandefence.com.au/defence/general/first-exports-roll-out-of-rheinmetall-nioa-munitions-factory; https://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/thales-to-make-155mm-artillery-shells-at-benalla.

Dr Robbin Laird, Deterrence by Denial, Impactful Projection, Proportionate Response and Multi-Domain Strike, 5 October 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) When reading through the Australian Government’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR), three core concepts stand out: deterrence by denial, the need to craft more impactful projection and, thirdly, to do so in order to have the capability for proportionate response. Let me review what the DSR said about these objectives and their relationship with one another. The DSR on page 37 provides a broad perspective on the purposes of the force structure redesign: “Current Australian defence policy is based on deterrence through denial. This military application of deterrence theory is based on the concept of establishing effective defence capabilities relative to the threat. “Current defence deterrence policy is based on demonstrating an ability to independently defeat threats within our immediate region. This was credible with a force structure postured for low-level and enhanced low-level regional threats. “Australia does not have effective defence capabilities relative to higher threat levels. In the present strategic circumstances, this can only be achieved by Australia working with the United States and other key partners in the maintenance of a favourable regional environment. Australia also needs to develop the capability to unilaterally deter any state from offensive military action against Australian forces or territory. “Although invasion of the Australian continent is a remote possibility, any adversary could seek to coerce Australia through cyber attacks, incursions in our north west shelf or parts of our exclusive economic zone, or disruptions to our sea lines of communication. By developing a resilient and capable ADF that can hold forces at risk in our northern maritime approaches, Australia could deter attacks on Australian forces or territory.” The DSR on page 19 identifies the capabilities which are prioritized by the review: “The ADF’s operational success will depend on the ability of the Integrated Force to apply the following critical capabilities: undersea warfare capabilities (crewed and uncrewed) optimised for persistent, long-range sub-surface intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike; an enhanced integrated targeting capability; an enhanced long-range strike capability in all domains; a fully enabled, integrated amphibious-capable combined-arms land system; enhanced, all-domain, maritime capabilities for sea denial operations and localised sea control; a networked expeditionary air operations capability; an enhanced, all-domain, integrated air and missile defence capability; a joint, expeditionary theatre logistics system with strategic depth and mobility; a theatre command and control framework that enables an enhanced Integrated Force; and a developed network of northern bases to provide a platform for logistics support, denial and deterrence.” Impactful projection is discussed notably on pages 6 and 106 of the review. “As most of these objectives lie well beyond our borders, the ADF must have the capacity to engage in impactful projection across the full spectrum of proportionate response. The ADF must be able to hold an adversary at risk further from our shores.” (Page 6) Then on page six: “Accordingly, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) must have the capacity to: defend Australia and our immediate region; deter through denial any adversary’s attempt to project power against Australia through our northern approaches; protect Australia’s economic connection to our region and the world; contribute with our partners to the collective security of the Indo-Pacific; and contribute with our partners to the maintenance of the global rules-based order. “The Government agrees that new technology and asymmetric advantage is a priority, and will ensure the ADF has the capacity to engage in impactful projection across the full spectrum of proportionate response.” (Page 106). In the Williams Foundation seminar on multi-domain strike held on 27 September 2023, several ADF speakers provided insight with regard to ADF thinking about the way ahead to achieve these inter-related objectives. LTGEN Frewan, Chief of Joint Capabilities, argued that “the DSR is calling for the Australian Defence Force to become a fully integrated force. And this infers something beyond joint. It requires an ADF integrated by design, rather than the three services being required to operate together in often ad hoc and imperfect ways. “And integration also applies to our command-and-control systems, our targeting systems and our enabling and sustainment capabilities. “The DSR shifts the priority for the ADF from a balanced force to a threat focused force utilizing a net assessment of our strategic and tactical challenges, and we must build an ADF that can deter or succeed against our immediate potential adversaries.” A key aspect of the multi-domain strike enterprise which Frewan discussed was the sustainment and logistics part of the enterprise. “Targeting, even in its most kinetic sense, will require a resilient logistics network to deliver munitions, maintenance and sustainment. It will be folly to develop a sophisticated targeting enterprise that does not have comparable investment in a logistics enterprise which has in recent decades been designed for efficiency rather than resilience.” LTGEN Frewan, Chief of Joint Capabilities, speaking at the 27 September Williams Foundation seminar. MAJGEN Brett Mousley, Head of Intelligence Capability, Defence Intelligence Group, emphasized the significant change in targeting capabilities required for the kind of strategic impactful projection which the DSR calls for. “We are now required to support our own sovereign plans and be ready to execute them at pace and scale… Our strategic settings also demands that the joint targeting cycle is always on, and therefore active in competition as well as in conflict. Early identification of the potential threats to the status quo, or actions that could lead to a deterioration in the security environment must be acted upon quickly with appropriate and non-escalatory effects to prevent or dissipate any potential crisis. “And as you also know, the ADF is acquiring advanced systems including Long Range Strike weapons, expanding its suite of non-kinetic effects, and increasingly operating in and through the contested cyber and space domains. “Importantly, from a Defense Intelligence Group perspective, the DSR has now given us the clear direction to accelerate the development and delivery of the key underpinning systems that support the processing, exploitation and dissemination of collected intelligence, including the ability to produce intelligence mission data, at greater volumes and velocity to support all aspects of targeting, from identification, to engagement and to assessment for all our key platforms, and weapon systems.” Mousley then discussed what he saw as the three key challenges which needed to be met to make progress along these lines. “Firstly, scaling the enterprise, we must be able to move from a workforce supporting a niche element in a single service against a small number of targets to supporting a much broader range of targets simultaneously across all domains….” He then discussed the need to “modernize our targeting databases and tools, ensuring they can process the significant volume of targeting information across all domains. We need to make a foundational military intelligence capability accessible across the entire enterprise whilst maintaining strong interoperability with our key allies.” And the third aspect was “the speed of decision making. MAJGEN Brett Mousley, Head of Intelligence Capability, Defence Intelligence Group, speaking at the Williams Foundation Seminar 27 September 2023. “The tempo of modern warfare will be high and opportunities to apply multi-domain effects will be fleeting, and will rely on well trained well-rehearsed forces and leaders who are informed to make timely decisions in a chaotic environment. “Intelligence for targeting indeed for all areas of intelligence support to operations will need to sift through and analyze the afore mentioned data to rapidly generate intelligence making it accessible to plans, operations and logistics staff. Only then will we be able to support leaders with timely and accurate advice and recommendations in order to execute the right effects at the right time and place.” RADM Stephen Hughes, Head Navy Capability, underscored that when focusing on the maritime domain, one is inherently focused on multi-domain strike. The maritime warfighting domain is shaped by strike whether coming from land, surface, subsurface or air domains, as well the cyber and space domains. “To attain long range strike capabilities allows us to move from a strategy of defense to a strategy of deterrence through denial which signifies a national shift that aims to hold an adversary at risk a greater range raising a question in the adversaries mind about whether they want to attempt to act against us. “So what does the maritime force bring to the fight? “A maritime force is able to be agile, mobile expeditionary scalable, sustainable, versatile, networked and lethal. Maritime force provides critical advantages through their ability to use the oceans to maneuver and hide in the case of submarines, and the airspace and the space above that domain. Maritime force combines distributed fleet operations, and mobile expeditionary forces with sea control and sea denial capabilities. “However, a maritime force does not compete, deter or fight alone. The maritime force is an integral part of the joint force and works closely with allies and partners to bring to bear maritime effects. Controlling the seas enables the maritime force to project power in support of Joint Force efforts. surging into the theater of operations, where adversaries must cross open water. Sea denial deprives them the initiative prevents them from achieving their objectives. RADM Stephen Hughes, Head Navy Capability, at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation seminar. “Maritime force controls or denies the seas by destroying an adversary’s fleet or their associated air support. And in in the modern battle space even extends into space. It can contain it in areas that prevents meaningful operations prohibited from leaving port by controlling sea lines of communication. Maritime forces capable of controlling critical choke points enable joint forces to impose military and economic costs on the adversary.” He also added comments with regard to the innovation which Navy is working to enhance multi-domain strike. “The future of our strike capability needs to include the use of uncrewed systems. Navy is working with industry in exploring solutions through the autonomous warrior series of experimental exercises. And such systems will have the ability to strike deep against an adversary by deploying mines and other guided weapons by using sovereign Australian capabilities.” As he underscored: “The defense strategic review has placed a premium on accelerating lethality for deterrence and impactful projection,” He cited the examples not only of acquiring TLAMS but the development of greater maritime strike capabilities. against maritime forces, whether from an F-35 or from anti-ship missile capabilities. AVM Stephen Chappell, Head of Military Strategic Commitments, focused on the symbiotic relationship between offense and defense with regard to multi-domain strike. “Integrated air and missile defense and multi-domain strike are two sides of the same coin. By having an ability to protect our strike enterprises we enhance their credibility to strike back which ensures as well our enhanced deterrent capability.” He underscored: “Passive defense is just as important not only for defending critical assets, but preserving our multi-domain strike capabilities in order to execute those left jabs and those right hooks necessary. The next layer of defense we’re thinking about is counter force. This in effect is multi-domain strike, the ability to reach out and defeat a threat to our homeland or to our forces. Deterrence by denial includes that defensive protection of the chin as we deliver effective left jabs and right hooks.” And finally, COL Casey Guidolin, Director ADF Multi-Domain Strike, provided a very clear analysis of multi-domain strike and its role in deterrent capabilities. “When considering multi domain strike, we must consider what each domain intrinsically brings and how they can be applied within our strategic geography to best effect. AVM Stephen Chappell, Head of Military Strategic Commitments, speaking at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation seminar. “Firstly, maritime forces provide lethality reach and persistence from on, above, or under the ocean surface. However, maritime strike weapons are often unique and expensive. And consideration must be given to the speed of maritime forces and distances required to travel to launch a strike as part of an orchestrated action and the subsequent time to return to port for reloading. Submarines have an inherent attribute of stealth range and significant strike power, as well as being able to conduct ISR covertly. “Land Forces possess unique attributes that contribute to joint forces in that they can disperse far more than air or naval forces. Land Forces are persistent in posture and presence for extended periods and can have utility in applying asymmetric responses with greater depth and capacity for strike capabilities. “Land Forces currently lack the reach required to match or overmatch adversary strike weapons. And the need to maneuver within striking distance of an adversary means that like maritime forces, the time required to travel to launch a strike as part of an orchestrated action must be considered. Persistent forward basing will improve reaction and response times. “Special Operations Forces offer a unique contribution to multi-domain strike through their inherent agility and stealth and ability to operate in and across all domains. “Air domain capabilities and operations are optimized to be relatively light and fast to magnify air powers utility as a first response option that enables access for heavier and more enduring elements of national power. Air Force can contribute to or enable an immediate or short-term response. “Air Force capabilities can be equipped and postured to provide immediate, impactful options with light footprints as the timeliness and impact can have significant bearing on the outcome to support a multi-domain strike. “Space capabilities provide the ADF with diversity and resilience of communications through defense satellite communications. Space assets also provide the ADF with vital intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. Importantly, all three are different capabilities. It’s not just ISR, which are essential in identifying and reporting the adversary’s location to support planning a multi-domain strike. COL Casey Guidolin, Director ADF Multi-Domain Strike speaking at the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation Seminar. “The space domain is an always on capability that provides intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance and secure communication is essential to supporting the orchestration of multi-domain strikes. “Cyber domain activities span enablement through to the provision of communications to exchange data, the collection of intelligence, the delivery of non-kinetic effects, and in some instances, strike options where offensive cyber operations and electronic attack capabilities can deny or degrade or disrupt adversary systems. “The primary attribute of the cyber domain is to ensure and assure the operational suitability of cyberspace in the electromagnetic spectrum to allow the multi domain strike system of systems to deliver effectively and efficiently their effectors to achieve the intended outcome. “When the attributes of each domain are combined, and the employment of effects are planned through an enhanced integrated targeting system, this visualization of a multi domain strike (seen in his slide which is the featured photo for the article) shows how the combination of domain effects will be able to deliver the required complementary effects to defeat a complex target.” In short, several key members of the ADF provided insights with regard to how multi-domain strike enables the kind of impactful projection and proportionate response capabilities required for an effective deterrence by denial strategy.

Dr Robbin Laird, The Challenge of Dealing with the 21st Century Authoritarian Powers: Progress and Paths Forward, 4 Oct 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) During my current visit to Australia in support of the 27 September Williams Foundation Conference, I had a chance to talk with Ross Babbage, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Forum Pty Ltd and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington DC. During my last visit we discussed his latest book which focused on the challenge of deterring China and avoiding the next World War. I asked him to provide an assessment of what progress has been made in Australia in focusing on the China threat and, indeed, on the broader challenge of the 21st century authoritarian powers seeking to reshape the global system to their advantage. He started by underscoring what he sees as major progress in Australia recognizing the multi-faceted challenge which the Chinese Communist Party-led China poses to Australia’s way of life. Compared to five years ago, there is now widespread recognition throughout Australian society of the broad challenge. This has been most notably demonstrated in the strong resistance of the Australian public to Chinese actions during the pandemic and it is also clear from shifts in Australian public opinion polling. But this does not translate in Babbage’s assessment into agreed agendas on what to do in response to the Chinese challenge. Rather, economic and political interests are interpreting the challenge differently and to their own perspectives. This makes it difficult to have a consensual response on all aspects of policy towards China. The Australian government and the ADF have recognized the need to broaden their working relationships throughout the region, not just as a junior partner of the United States, but as a democratic actor in its own right. We have seen the ADF expand its engagements in Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, and there is a growing effort to strengthen the cooperative relationships with Japan, South Korea and India. Babbage also noted that Australia is expanding defence and security cooperation with the Philippines which is to the benefit of all democracies defending their interests against China. He underscored that the United States has a long history with the Philippines. But Australia’s relationship with the Philippines carries fewer domestic sensitivities for Manila and so Australia has more flexibility than the United States in dealing with some issues. He characterized the Australian approach in the region as follows: “There has been progress in building a loose network and coalition of Pacific nations who are really wanting to reinforce their own security, independence and sovereignty and are very happy to work with Australia.” One area of concern has been to ensure security of supply in raw materials. And here there has been significant progress among the allies and partners in shaping common approaches and framing ways to work together. He cited the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity Agreement Relating to Supply Chain Resilience” as an example of progress in this area of cooperation. An article in The Diplomat characterizes the effort: “Building supply chain resilience has become a shared objective for many Indo-Pacific countries that experienced supply chain disruptions and recognized the vulnerabilities therein because of overdependence on a single source: China… “According to the U.S. embassy press release, the IPEF Agreement has several different institutional components — including the IPEF Supply Chain Council, the IPEF Supply Chain Crisis Response Network, the IPEF Labor Rights Advisory Board — that are each tasked with a specific agenda. “The IPEF Supply Chain Crisis Response Network is supposed to put in place an emergency communication network for IPEF members to enlist support in case of a supply chain disruption. The network will aid in information-sharing and cooperation among IPEF partners, with the goal of providing for “a faster and more effective response that minimizes negative effects on their economies.” “Similarly, the IPEF Supply Chain Council is supposed to institute an arrangement among IPEF partners in order to establish “sector-specific action plans for critical sectors and key goods to enhance the resilience of IPEF partner’s supply chains, including through diversification of sources, infrastructure and workforce development, enhanced logistics connectivity, business matching, joint research and development, and trade facilitation.” Ross Babbage argues that such agreements, although important, will not solve the raw material dependence problem for Australia or the United States. The core problem is rooted in the atrophy of the resource processing and manufacturing industry in Australia and the United States. The processing of raw materials within an allied context is crucial. Simply having or acquiring raw materials that are then processed by the Chinese who have built significant processing capability, hardly solves the problem. The scope of the problem was highlighted by Babbage in the following terms: “In 2004, the United States had nearly twice the manufacturing output as China. By 2019, China had nearly twice that of the United States. In Australia, it is the same story. Around 1960, about 24% of Australia’s output by value came from the Australian manufacturing sector It’s now some 5%. Australia and the United States have both decimated many of their manufacturing capacities.” “There is a pathway for allied industrial recovery but it requires energetic cross-domain initiatives by all of the Indo-Pacific allies.” We need to remove barriers to investment to build back our manufacturing base. But there are many obstacles to progress, largely political and regulatory. The contrast to China’s approach is stark. For example, while Australia moves away from the use of coal, purportedly to attenuate climate change, China is building coal powered plants at a rapid rate. In recent months Beijing has approved an average of two new coal fired power stations and commenced construction on a third every week. It will be difficult to deal with these issues unless we shape new mechanisms to frame policy debates. We tend to get stuck into social media framing events, rather than scoping out the nature of long-range problems facing our society and initiating sensible solutions. I am working on a project with my friend and colleague Dr. Harald Malmgren which we call Beyond 2024: Dealing with the Critical Issues Which are Re-Shaping America’s Role in the World. This will not be for faint hearted to read. We are in a new historical era and not of our own making. How do we shape effective policy based on global realities not social media exchanges and political posturing? This is a major challenge facing the liberal democracies. And it is central to any fully effective alliance between the United States and all of its Indo-Pacific allies. Featured Photo: Moscow. March 20 – 22, 2023. Meeting of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Silhouette of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin

Dr Robbin Laird, Maritime Autonomous Systems and the Operational Force: How to Accelerate the Effort? 3 Oct 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) Recently, I had a chance to continue my discussions with CDRE Darron Kavanagh who is Director General Warfare Innovation, Royal Australian Navy Headquarters, concerning maritime autonomous systems. Kavanagh has been one of the most articulate leaders of the development and introduction of maritime autonomous systems in Australia. It is well recognized that autonomous systems are critical to provide the mass necessary for the kind of multi-domain operations which the ADF requires. For example, as Vice Air-Marshal retired Zed Roberton noted at the 27 September Williams Foundation seminar: Going forward, Roberton argued that “we will see a massive focus on things like uncrewed aerial vehicles, uncrewed sea vehicles or land vehicles, the ability to have pre-positioned missile systems and of course, synchronized with cyber and in space effects.” But how to get the effort started operationally? We need to move from science projects and exercises to regular use by the combat forces to realize the opportunities inherent in maritime autonomous systems. But how to do so? Kavanagh started our conversation by underscoring that it is important to understand what these systems are and what they represent. They are not traditional platforms that you are focused on integrating with the force. He argued: “They don’t replace platforms; they complement the integrated force. They are complimentary to that force in that they interface rather than being fully integrated with the current force elements.” With the introduction of new crewed platforms, one must focus on backward engineering legacy systems to work with the new ones. That takes time and has high costs. This is understandable because warriors’ lives are at risk. This is not the model by which to understand maritime autonomous systems, and certainly not the way to understand how you get them into the hands of warfighters for operations. They are not crewed, and your concern is with efficacy, not a primary emphasis on survivability. Maritime autonomous systems interface with and complement the existing force to enhance their lethality. They extend the ISR and C2 range of the force and add to the non-lethal and lethal weapons available to the combat force. Maritime autonomous systems add to the survivability of the force. As CDRE Kavanagh noted: “We have a finite number of crewed exquisite platforms. By leveraging autonomous systems these platforms can extend their defensive perimeter and provide various tools to complicate the adversaries attack profile on those crewed systems.” For example, in effect, USVs can play the role of the picket ships in World War II, thereby enhancing the survivability of the destroyer and carrier fleet. Or to use a Fifth Fleet example, USVs operating with destroyers can operate as a buffer between these key assets and Iranian patrol boats. The USVs function as the police guard dogs and if the Iranians were to attack them, the destroyer’s Rules of Engagement then allows it to destroy the Iranian patrol vessel. And because of how maritime autonomous systems are developed and built, you can shape the kind of affordable mass which we discussed in the multi-domain strike seminar held by the Williams Foundation on 27 September 2023. As CDRE Kavanagh underscored: “When you start leveraging maritime autonomous systems that are low cost, you can create affordable mass, and you’re setting up a system that allows for resilience. You can manufacture them at mass. Not only can I build them in peacetime but we can keep developing them and delivering them quite quickly during hostilities.” And by focusing on complementarity rather than integration, there can be a much wider search within the commercial sector to adopt the rapid innovations in the commercial sector occurring in terms of autonomous systems. CDRE Kavanagh specifically mentioned the Australian mining sector as one where rapid progress is being made on autonomous systems. If you are not using unique military specs which are designed in order to integrate with the extant force but rather providing complimentary capabilities which can directed by the force, then there is a much wider canvas of innovation from which to adopt autonomous system innovations. Because there are a wide range of civilian and security missions that maritime autonomous systems are already being used for and their roles and numbers will increase to do so, the military can dip into this existing and growing capability as well. The protection of undersea infrastructure and wind farms are two examples which are suggestive of a broader trend. According to CDRE Kavanagh: “We simply will delay adoption of autonomous systems by reducing them to the mantra of integration. By focusing on complementarity and finding ways to use the systems as compliments to the fleet and extending the range of the various effects desired, we can find a variety of missions which these systems can meet now and in the future.” He noted that in the DSR, there is much focus on deterrence by denial. Autonomous systems can clearly help in disrupting adversary operations and deny them quick results against crewed platforms. Then there is the key question of how maritime autonomous systems are being designed from the outset to operate in clusters or wolfpacks. And by so doing, they can operate as an interactive complimentary buffer force operating with the core integrated combat force to deliver persistent effects. In short, one needs to focus on the broader con-ops of the operation of the forces, rather than on the integration of autonomous systems within the much more complicated integrated crewed combat systems. If you don’t, we simply won’t use them in the timely manner as we must in the era of strategic competition within which we live. And an aspect of con-ops we discussed as well was the relationship of maritime autonomous systems and their operations to deterrence. On the one hand, maritime autonomous systems can be deployed as part of a deterrence by detection strategy. This can be enhanced by sharing with partners who are not close allies, or the kind of allies you wish to integrate your crewed platforms with. At the March seminar, Jake Campbell highlighted the importance of deterrence by detection as follows: “Adversaries are less likely to commit opportunistic acts of aggression if they know they are being watched constantly and that their actions can be publicized widely.” On the other hand, when it comes to signalling, a key part of deterrence, sending in a maritime autonomous systems wolfpack simply does not have the same meaning as sending a Aegis led surface action group. It indicates concern, but does not raise the weapons threshold that such SAG is designed to do. In short, maritime autonomous systems considered as complimentary capabilities which are controlled by but not built to be closely integrated with the combat force can deliver a number of the key capabilities which the DSR has called for. Featured Image: 10 May 2022 photo of Rear Admiral Selby, when as the Chief of Naval Research, USN he visited Australia and met with CDRE Kavanagh and Michael Stewart, Director the Unmanned Task Force.

Dr Robbin Laird, The Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar September 2023: The Enterprise Requirements of an Australian Multi-Domain Strike Enterprise, 29 Sep 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) On 27 September 2023, the second Williams Foundation seminar for the year was held at the National Gallery in Canberra. The first focused on deterrence and the second provided a case study of building blocks for enhanced deterrent capabilities, namely shaping a multi-domain strike enterprise for the ADF and the support structure for so doing. At the outset of the Seminar, Air Marshal (Retired) Geoff Brown, the Williams Foundation Chairman, underscored the purpose and focus of the seminar: “Simply new weapons like Tomahawk will not by themselves give Australia a credible strike enterprise. All those weapons do not give you a long-range strike capability. We are focused on the requirements to build a multi-domain enterprise beyond the question of the specific weapons.” SQNLDR Sally Knox, the moderator for the seminar and a member of the Williams Foundation added: “The aim of today’s seminar is to further develop the theme of deterrence, which we spoke about at the March conference. We will examine the enterprise requirements of a sovereign multi-domain strike capability in the context of the defence strategic review. As part of that effort, we will examine the apparatus of an Australian capability needed to strike into the into the broader region, including the implications of a national industrial base, as well as access and basing considerations.” Australia has focused on building a fifth-Generation force which inherently is focused on integrability at the high-end. Part of the discussions revolved around looking at next steps, for multi-domain strike is inherent in the concept of fifth generation airpower. Multi-domain strike is about interactive targeting capability across a deployed force or third-party targeting. The question of what the roles of ISR and C2 are in the evolution of fifth generation airpower has been a key theme over the past few years in Williams Foundation seminars. This discussion was broadened to focus on strike enablement by such an integrated force. SQNLDR Sally Knox, the moderator for the Seminar. But linking the first seminar of the year with the second raises a key question: What kinds of strike have higher deterrent value than others? Is it range? Is it targeting the adversary’s C2 and core ISR capabilities? There clearly is a difference between strike delivered by HIMARS systems and by Tomahawks with regard to purpose and deterrent effect. This was inherent in the discussions but not focused on as a core question, but clearly needs further consideration as well. In the report to follow, I will highlight all of the presentations and organize the key contributions of the presenters within the overall discussion of shaping a strike enterprise. Here I will quote a few of the presentations to highlight key themes discussed during the day. The PACAF Commander, General Ken Wilsbach, provided a video presentation. He has been a stalwart supporter of the Williams Foundation seminars during his time as PACAF for many reasons, but a core one is his emphasis on the positive impact of the integratability of the U.S. and Australian Air Forces and their sharing with other allies of their robust integrated operating experience. The collaboration between the operational militaries has been a key factor shaping more effective defence collaboration, and combat and deterrent capabilities. Wilsbach underscored why enhanced multi-domain strike was so important in shaping force evolution in the region: “Multi-domain operations allow us to overwhelm the adversary. Historically, warfare carries certain constants. One of the most important of these is gaining and maintaining the initiative. A combatant seizes the initiative, not through advanced technologies or PACAF Commander, General Ken Wilsbach superior training, but because they hit the adversary hard enough to knock them off balance, then hit them repeatedly to maintain an enduring advantage. pressure generated by synchronizing operations in time and space creates the opportunities where technology and training can make a difference.” In my recent book on the F-35 global enterprise, I emphasized how crucial collaboration among allied militaries has been to even see the emergence of fifth generation capability. General Wilsbach made a similar point with regard to shaping a way ahead for a multi-domain strike enterprise. “Our first job is to ensure that everyone in our respective services understand why these new multi-domain skills are necessary. If they don’t buy in, they won’t work toward developing at the pace we need. “Our second job is to remove the obstacles from their path to modernize, integrate and innovate. “Every person at this conference likely has a story of how a great idea was shut down before it got off the ground purely due to bureaucracy. This is an area that America can and should learn from Australia; your aviators are far less likely to stumble over bureaucratic hurdles than American airmen. We cannot afford to let process stand in the way of progress. “The men and women in this room are the ones who set priorities and establish expectations. If you as leaders are onboard and your aviators are ready, but progress still stalls, find the chaff in your organization and burn it out. We will only be able to effectively compete if we stop hobbling ourselves. First; deterrence is our top priority but should it fail, we must also ensure our people are prepared for what follows. Those same men and women that set the global standard for what an airman or aviator should be in competition must also set the standard for how a joint operator executes the mission and conflict. “Those personnel are the ones most likely to understand the challenges we face from a pure adversary and the inadequacy of a single domain response as leaders convey the why and then trust them to make the changes necessary to accelerate our response for new airmen and aviators joining our ranks built in multi domain warfare concepts from the outset. To them, the differences between services should be nothing more than the uniform.” In a later presentation, the other distinguished foreign airpower leader, Air Marshal Harvey Smyth, the Air and Apace commander, Royal Air Force, underscored that all strike is not equal. He highlighted the importance of longer-range strike, which for the RAF was their Storm Shadow weapon, first deployed on Tornados and now on Eurofighters. The next generation of Storm Shadow is the SPEAR family of weapons being developed to be able to be fired by the F-35 as well. It should be noted that MBDA as a French-British company is a key part of building capability for both air forces and does represent the core need to collaborate in weapons development and production between allied countries. But Smyth added a key thought with regard to multi-domain strike and the defence enterprise. If you are shaping multi-domain strike you need to be focused as well on integrated air and missile defence. This is key reminder that development in one part of defence capability drives change in another. There was significant discussion of the changes in ISR and C2 associated with building a multi-domain strike enterprise. And the several years of discussion of fifth generation airpower and force building in earlier Williams Foundation seminars presaged much of this discussion and provides a significant body of analysis in thinking through the way ahead. ISR delivered through various means, Triton UAVs, space-based assets, F-35s, Growlers, specialized ISR airplanes, etc, are becoming more than simply collectors for decision makers. Given the need to operate at the speed of relevance those ISR Air Marshal Harvey Smyth, the Air and Space Commander, Royal Air Force. operators are now part of providing rapid inputs to strike decisions and are not part of a long ISR to decider kill chain which has been used in the land wars. Speed to relevance requires a significant shift in how ISR is embodied in decision-making more rapidly. One of the speakers, WGCDR Marija Jovanovich, Commanding Officer 10 SQN, explicitly discussed what I think is nothing less than a revolution in ISR capabilities at the tactical edge and their role in empowering distributed force C2. She mentioned explicitly her participation in NAWDCs’ Resolute Hunter exercise, an exercise which I observed in part which highlights the change. The essence of the training seen in Resolute Hunger is part of newly evolving shape of the multi-domain strike enterprise. This is how I and my co-author described the exercise in our book on The Maritime WGCDR Marija Jovanovich, Commanding Officer 10 SQN Kill Web Force in the Making (which coincidently has a drawing of an Australian Triton on the cover): “Cmdr. Pete “Two Times” Salvaggio, the head of the MISR Weapons School (MISRWS), was in charge of the Resolute Hunter exercise. In a discussion with “Two Times” in his office during the November 2020 visit, he underscored the shift underway. The goal of the training embodied in the exercise is for operators in airborne ISR to operate as “puzzle solvers.” Rather than looking at these airborne teams as the human managers of airborne sensors, “we are training future Jedi Knights.” “And to be clear, all the assets used in the exercise are not normally thought of as ISR platforms but are platforms that have significant sensor capabilities. It really was about focusing on sensor networks and sorting through how these platform/networks could best shape an understanding of the evolving mission and paths to mission effectiveness. “The ISR sensor networks with men in the loop can deliver decisions with regard to the nature of the evolving tactical situation, and the kinds of decisions which need to be made in the fluid combat environment. It may be to kill or to adjust judgements about what that battlespace actually signifies in terms of what needs to be done. “And given the speed with which kill decisions need to be made with regards to certain classes of weapons, the ISR/C2 network will operate as the key element of a strike auction. Which shooter needs to do what at which point in time to degrade the target? How best to determine which element of the shoot sequence—not the kill chain—needs to do what in a timely manner, when fighting at the speed of light? “What ISR capabilities can deliver are “moments of clarity” with regard to decisive actions. At a minimum, the ISR teams are shifting from providing information for someone else to make a decision to being able to deconstruct the battlefield decision to craft real time understanding of the situation and the targeting options and priorities.” The discussion of C2 throughout the day underscored the impact of the shift to distributed force operations upon how to make decisions which tapped into various groupings of platforms to deliver multi-domain strike to deliver the desired effect. In the presentation by defence analyst Carl Rhodes, he underscored the scope and nature of the change required: “So if we look at command and control, what allows us to go from today’s capabilities to these future concepts? “First of all, the decision making needs to go from a very centralized process to a more decentralized process, delegating more authority down to the commanders who are in the air, potentially, or to multiple command cells in the field. “The planning and execution can move from primarily a human centric process, assisted by computers, to maybe human centric AI assisted process to an AI enabled process, where humans are helping the process, but the AI is doing a lot of the work. “So that’s command and control. You also need improved communications as well. So today, interoperability exists. It’s enabled in specific kill chains, but doesn’t exist for all parts of the force. “And to move to these future concepts, you need to build it into systems, all systems kind of at birth across domain. You also need to think about resilience rather than just protecting individual links. How do you protect the entire system by using diverse paths independent decision making?” A key theme embedded in several presentations was the nature of the ADF transition needed to fully adapt to multi-domain strike operations. For example, several speakers talked about the significant progress in tactical joint force targeting over the past decade. Now the challenge was to build on that progress to work more effectively to provide strategic multi-domain targeting. And building out the military kit necessary to deliver strike is a key challenge for Australia. Here the working relationship with the United States is key to delivering the initial long-range strike capability. But going forward, as we discussed in the last seminar, there clearly needs to be Carl Rhodes presenting at the Sir Richard Williams Seminar. an arsenal of democracy. This means the United Sates or the European designer of the weapon system is able to open production lines in Australia both Australian and allied needs. As AVM Gerry van Leeuwen, Head of Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordinance put it: “As global suppliers work to refill their inventory still recovering from the impacts of the “COVID global pandemic, they’re working in capacity to meet increasing demand, and the world seems to have woken up. To use an analogy, it looks like everyone’s in the same buffet line. And if you’re the back of the queue, you better not be too hungry. “We’re currently working on creative ways to accelerate orders, and especially those long-range strike weapons. And not surprisingly, those weapons are the same weapons in high demand by the U.S. given our common interest in the Indo-PACOM region. But our AVM Gerry van Leeuwen, Head of Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordinance. relationship is strong and collegiate. The U.S. seemed willing to work with us in that regard, but have cautioned that if they provide advanced weapons for Australia, we sure as hell better be prepared to use them.” The scope of enterprise considerations was a key theme of the presentation by LTGEN John Frewen, Chief of Joint Capabilities. “Multi-domain infers the integration of all five domains, not just the three traditional domains with space, cyber and information as auxiliary add ones. Multi-domain requires the prioritization, sequencing and layering of kinetic and non-kinetic effects at moments in time and throughout a campaign. And this applies in both competition and conflict. “And I offer four thoughts or areas for focus around Australia’s multi-domain strike enterprise…I’m just back from the U.S. last week. And all of the briefings I recently received spoke to see five ISR T and the T is targeting. “And I think this is clear acknowledgment that our command-and-control systems and our targeting systems are inherently linked. And we’ve got to start to design and operate our C2 and targeting systems as part of a whole and to defend them and our freedom to operate through cybersecurity, space control and electronic warfare. “We will also need the ability to force generate the people and collective skills required to generate increasingly complex targeting and that will be an endeavor on itself. “Secondly, no C2 targeting system going forward will be effective unless it is empowered through artificial LTGEN John Frewen, Chief of Joint Capabilities. intelligence. This is both in a sense of data management of ever-increasing volumes of data and decision support in ever more complicated environments, including machine on machine contests. We must build effective AI into all of our systems from here on in and start to grow the specialist workforce needed to design enable and oversee ai ai capabilities. “Whether in competition or conflict, no government or military endeavor will succeed without understanding, if not dominating the information environment. And this has always been true even if we have not always been as conscious of it as we are now. “What has changed is the scale of content and range of mediums for information, the evolution of the art of misinformation, and the appetite of some populations for alternative truths. All of this is now being fueled by machine capabilities and AI in ways that are beyond traditional means of management. “We must increasingly grow our capacities both human and machine in the information environment. This is essential to deterrence and to competition and conflict and we must not permit a targeting system to evolve that is not fully aware of and nested with information and other non-kinetic effects. “And finally, we cannot overlook the centrality of logistics to all we do. This applies to multi-domain targeting as much as it does to conventional maneuver. Targeting, even in its most kinetic sense, will require a resilient logistics network to deliver money, munitions, maintenance and sustainment both here domestically. “And in areas of intense conflict, it will be folly to develop a sophisticated targeting enterprise that does not have comparable investment in a logistics enterprise that has in recent decades been designed for efficiency rather than resilience.” Air Marshal (Retired) Brown concluded the session by raising two cautionary notes. The first was the question of structuring DoD to be able to deliver the effects desired. And second was the question of resources. “We have a DSR that is strategically ambitious. And I basically agree with most of the things that are in it, but it is not funded. And while it is not funded, that creates an enormous problem for the DoD and for the IDF going forward.” Air Marshal (Retired) Geoff Brown.

Dr Robbin Laird, The DSR and the Australian Strike Enterprise 30 Sep 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) We need to start first with considering how the 2023 Australian Defence Review has prioritized the need for enhanced ADF strike capabilities. In the review, the notion of enhanced strike capability entails shaping longer-range reach of those capabilities, the enhancement of joint strike capabilities and the shaping of an industrial base to support the strike enterprise transition. Here is some of the language from the DSR regarding the strike enterprise: “Due to the significant changes in Australia’s strategic circumstances, the Government agrees with the Review’s finding that the ADF as currently constituted and equipped is not fully fit for purpose. The Government deeply appreciates those who serve in the ADF and is committed to ensuring our people have the capabilities and resources they need. Delivering the Government’s vision and implementing the findings of the Review will require a more holistic approach to defence planning and strategy. Air Vice-Marshal (Retired) Zed Roberton presenting at the September Williams Foundation seminar. “Australia must have a fully integrated and more capable ADF operating across five domains which work seamlessly together on joint operations to deliver enhanced and joined-up combat power. Navy must have enhanced lethality – including through its surface fleet and conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines – underpinned by a continuous naval shipbuilding program. Army must be optimised for littoral operations in our northern land and maritime spaces and provide a long-range strike capability. Air Force must provide the air support for joint operations in our north by conducting surveillance, air defence, strike and air transport. Defence must also continue to develop its cyber and space capabilities. “The Government’s immediate actions to reprioritise Defence’s capabilities in line with the Review’s recommendations include: investing in conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines through the AUKUS partnership; developing the ADF’s ability to precisely strike targets at longer range and manufacture munitions in Australia….” (Page 7) A key focus is upon “an enhanced long-range strike capability in all domains.” (Page 19). This is one of the justifications proffered for acquiring nuclear powered attack submarines. “The acquisition of conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines will transform Navy’s capability. Nuclear-powered submarines are key assets both in effecting a strategy of denial and in the provision of anti-submarine warfare and long-range strike options.” (Page 56). For Army this means: “Defence must rapidly accelerate and expand Army’s littoral manoeuvre vessels (medium and heavy landing craft) and long-range fires (land-based maritime strike) programs. This will require Army to re-posture key capabilities.” (Page 59). This is translated in the DSR in terms of acquiring HIMARS and a land-based maritime strike capability. (Page 59). For the RAAF, the B-21 is rejected as an acquisition option but there is an emphasis on “F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and F/A-18F Super Hornet aircraft must be able to operate the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile. The Joint Strike Missile (JSM) should also be integrated onto the F-35A. To enable the F-35A fleet to operate the JSM, the aircraft will need to be upgraded to Block 4 configuration.” (Page 61). And finally, Australia must build up its production capability in the strike area. “Long-range strike and other guided weapons are fundamental to the ADF’s ability to hold an adversary at risk in Australia’s northern approaches. To do this, the ADF must hold sufficient stocks of guided weapons and explosive ordnance (GWEO) and have the ability to manufacture certain lines.” (Page 68). At the Williams Foundation seminar held on 27 September 2023 on the enterprise requirements of an Australian multi-domain strike capability, the former Air Commander Australia, Air Vice-Marshal (Retired) Zed Roberton discussed the DSR and strike. Roberton looked back at the history of ADF orientations and engagements and argued that until the 2020 defence initiative of the government, the ADF was equally balanced among three objectives: “Those were to defend Australia, look after the near region and to contribute to global coalitions as part of the global order. It was really interesting that those three objectives were equally weighted by design.” After 2020 and in the recent DSR, the shift has been clearly to prioritizing Australian defence within the Indo-Pacific. And in so doing, he underscored that the focus is not just the defence of Australia to the North but a much broader focus on the Indo-Pac region. This means that Australia now faces a “four ocean front” in designing and operating its force in the defense of Australia. But given the size of Australia as a continent, and the relatively small population, the ADF needs to be capable of generating agility to generate the mass required to make a significant strategic effect. Roberton argued that the ADF needs to follow three principles to generate the capability needed for agility and force integration to achieve a desired strategic effect. The first is redundancy, not resilience. “We have too many single points of failure. The multi-domain approach provides a way to focus on redundancy in strike.” The second is agility. Roberton underscored: “When you’ve got a small number of people in a defense force with a small base, your ability to bring about an effect around the continental landmass or its approaches and hold forces at risk further from Australia requires agility. And a level of agility not just in capabilities, but in our procedures and processes.” The third is focused mass. This obviously is the goal of multi-domain strike, to have an ability for an agile force to concentrate across multiple domains the desired strategic effect. Going forward, Roberton argued that “we will se a massive focus on things like uncrewed aerial vehicles, uncrewed sea vehicles or land vehicles, the ability to have pre-positioned missile systems and of course, synchronized with cyber and in space effects.” He concluded that two questions are critical moving forward which we need to consider. “How does Australia hold adversary forces at risk further from our shores? And and what does next generation deterrence really look like?” But he warned that the question of both resourcing and prioritization in defence raises real challenges for the kind of force adapation which Australia will need. He provided a slide in his presentation which highlighted the extent of the budget challenge. Put in simple terms: how does Australia pay for its nuclear submarine project and at the same time source the overall ADF transition to a multi-domain capable defence force?

Dr Robbin Laird, Considering the Nature of Strike and Its Role in Deterrence Strategy, 1 Oct 2023 Link to article (Defense.info) At the 27 September 2023 Williams Foundation Seminar, Chris McInnes of the Foundation provided a conceptual analysis of the elements of strike and their utility In warfighting and deterrence. He warned against the experience of the past two decades where precision strike has been used by the liberal democracies to reduce risk to themselves and collateral damage against our adversaries. He looked back at World War II and provided several examples of the need for a prolonged campaign of strike to achieve objectives, and indeed, the challenges facing World War II bombing campaigns in Europe to achieve objectives as the Germans responded in asymmetric ways to reduce the strategic effect of those strike efforts on the German war effort. McInnes underscored: “Understanding the driving purposes behind why Australia is investing in strike is crucial to building strike forces. Strike direction must be supported by diverse philosophies that enable a generation of new ideas and approaches. These in turn should be tried and tested through many small experiments. These philosophical elements underpin the range of opportunities strike provides. “To exploit these opportunities, we must carefully consider the elements of utility and access. Utility is context dependent, and includes considerations of effectiveness, reliability, flexibility, and repeatability. Access is an outcome of operational reach, which requires the packaging of forces with appropriate permissions, range, responsiveness and sustainability.” Chris McInnes speaking at the Williams Foundation Seminar 27 September 2023 . I would note that the DSR talks often of deterrence by denial in which clearly multi-domain strike plays a key role. But what is the exact correlation between types of strikes and where they are delivered to achieve deterrence by denial? This really is an unanswered question in the DSR but is crucial in connecting any considerations of what strike, when and how leads to deterrence rather than ongoing escalation. The war in Ukraine certainly is a warning with regard to the question of what strike options are related to war termination which is the function of deterrence in conflict short of total war. There seems to be little consideration of how escalating strike options for Ukraine is connected with war termination or “victory.” In effect, McInnes was calling for clear headed thinking with regard to shaping long range and multi-domain strike capabilities by Australia to the strategic purposes of deterrence. McInnes provided a one-slide summary of what he called the elements of strike. This slide underscored that the strike which is possible needs to be correlated with the purpose and duration of conducting strikes. Where are your strike assets deployed or located? What can they achieve against your adversary? In tactical terms and in deterrent meaning? Long-range strike is part of an effort to touch the adversary further from your forces or your territory. Yet multi-domain strike in a key area delivered by ground-maritime-air forces tactically may have the strategic effect one is looking for. But from my personal point of view, it is crucial to link strike considerations with deterrent considerations with capabilities to negotiate in conflict situations. Strike capabilities are key parts of negotiating from strength, but only if the political actors understand the relationship between particular strike capabilities and conflict termination. This is a subject for considered attention going forward.

On 24 October 2019, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation is holding a seminar examining the requirements of #5thgenmanoeuvre. The aim of the seminar, building on previous seminars and series looking at #jointstrike and #highintensitywar, is to examine the differences and potential gaps in how the Australian Defence Force must equip and organise for multi-domain operations. We are delighted to welcome first-time contributor, Dougal Robertson, to The Central Blue to explore the critical question of what the people orchestrating #5thgenmanoeuvre will look like. In this first of two parts, Dougal imagines the future maneouvrist to be something quite different. What does a fifth-generation manoeuvrist look like? They will not look like this: General Sir John Monash. (Source: Australian War Memorial) Furthermore, they will not look like this: Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger (Source: Australian War Memorial) Moreover, despite what media speculation might have us believe; they will not look like this: What we know is they will look less like the Australian Defence Force of today, and more like the Australia of the future. That is, they could be anyone who chooses to serve their country through the application of military power in support of the Australian government’s objectives. What Monash, Scherger, and the archetypal computer hacker have in common is the power of imagination. Monash — an outsider — understood the application of combined arms warfare, a revolutionary concept in 1918, instinctively. Scherger — an outsider — understood the application of flexibility in aircraft combined with mission design, developing a concept during the Second World War of multirole aircraft, and grasping the requirement for the RAAF to embrace technological change and integrate within a coalition. The computer hacker — an outsider — understands how networks function and can creatively identify weak points within those networks inherently. There are many individual examples in military history of creative outsiders generating unconventional ideas that are now accepted wisdom. In the application of air power, this includes John Boyd and energy manoeuvrability theory, and John Warden III and precision bombing.[1] However, the shift in the past quarter-century from an industrial paradigm to an information paradigm in warfare has disrupted all conventional ways of thinking about conflict. With hindsight the ‘revolution in military affairs’ of the early 1990s was a failed coup; the last act in the theatre of two-dimensional, linear industrial warfare.[2] The current and unfolding information revolution is a complete disruption to the previously-existing order. It forces us to change the cognitive models we use to represent reality and frame and resolve complex military problems.[3] Warfare occurs within society — it is not isolated on a mythical battlefield where clearly defined rules apply. Therefore, warfare reflects modern society. Moreover, the information revolution has flattened what that society looks like: all combatants, adversaries, competitors and insurgents have access to the internet, low-cost technology and distributed communication systems. They are all connected. We are connected to them. The fact of our presence causes a reaction, regardless of our actual behaviour.[4] That means we can no longer conceive of military operations and plans unfolding in a linear, two-dimensional fashion. The industrial model of warfare looks like this:[5] We start at a time, T-0, and progress through our objective to the End State. Apart from the questionable assumption that the adversary and environment will agree with our plan, this ignores the complexity of external factors pressing on each ‘Objective:’ the complex interaction of human behaviours, the changes in perception, irrational decisions and equipment failures. An earlier theorist called these external factors ‘friction’. This is an excellent metaphor for the industrial warfare paradigm. People and plans must move forward in time and space, and friction slows things down, but the final objective is ultimately achieved through overwhelming force.[6] However, what if we fight on a battlefield (and ‘operating environment’) that looks more like this. A map of the internet, c. 2005 It is probably impossible to conceptualise, in human terms that can be displayed on this page, what the internet of 2019 looks like. Moreover, this is essentially the problem we are asking fifth generation manoeuvrists to resolve. What a fifth-generation manoeuvrist must develop and master is mental agility that is like the coming swarm: able to rapidly form ad-hoc networks, route around problems or blockages, and make decisions independently to achieve a broadly defined outcome.[7] There are no concurrent lines of operation drawn on a briefing slide for a swarm. The outcome itself depends on the behaviour or input of externalities to the system. This may seem abstruse and theoretical. However, the great advantage of the information revolution is that technology has coming close to providing us with the capability to represent human behaviour through the exploration of networks and systems, using visualisation tools once considered the realm of science fiction. If the study of warfare is the study of human interactions, then technology allows us to edge closer to seeing the world outside the frame of our individual existence and cognition. If we imagine the snapshot of the internet above as consisting of computers and people (an internet protocol address can be both a ‘thing’ on the internet and an individual user), we can begin to understand how a system functions. Technology allows us to identify the bridges between ‘things’, or entities, such as radars, aircraft, trunked mobile radios and iPhones, and the system in which they function. This is the network layer that enables connections between nodes on different networks. Previously, we could only conceptualise our own ‘local’ network. Now, the information revolution assists us to conceptualise multiple networks and understand how they connect. What the swarming mind can do is understand the objects that comprise a network and visualise the networks that comprise a system. This system may be a set of human behaviours, such as a terrorist media network, or a nation-state’s power grid, or a collection of air defence radars, but it always consists of a hierarchy of objects and networks that inform human behaviours. The swarming mind can frame the problem and disaggregate it into specific components. Properly implemented this cognitive framework will be transformative, allowing airmen to guide and observe autonomous systems and machine decision-making, instead of setting limits using a Boolean tree of decisions (much like the ‘logical lines of operation’ used in industrial warfare). They will be integrators of technology, not just controllers. This is far from a simple task. However, it can be grown through culture. Clive James wrote that “culture is what is left when you take everything else away”.[8] The Australian Defence Force has a robust culture that exists outside equipment, weapon systems and buildings. Culture grows and adapts within groups and individuals – networks and systems. We now need to feed that culture and grow the fifth-generation manoeuvrist with the swarming mind. In part two, I will explain how the ADF can incubate and grow a culture to master the emerging and disruptive technologies of information warfare. Squadron Leader Dougal Robertson is an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. He holds a Master of Arts in Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism through Macquarie University. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect the views of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government. [1] J. Jogerst, ‘Airpower Trends 2010: The Future Is Closer Than You Think,’ Air & Space Power Journal, 23:2 (2009), p. 127. [2] B. Jensen, ‘The role of ideas in defense planning: Revisiting the revolution in military affairs,’ Defence Studies, 18:3 (2018), pp. 302-17. [3] S. Metz, Armed conflict in the 21st century: The information revolution and post-modern warfare (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2000). [4] D. Cortright, ‘Winning without war: Nonmilitary strategies for overcoming violent extremism,’ Transnational Law Contemporary Problems, 21:1 (2012), 197-226. [5] G. Hodge, ‘Wargaming Courses of Action During Other-Than-Major Combat Operations,’ Small Wars Journal (2012). [6] An alternative interpretation is that Clausewitz conceived of ‘general friction’ being overcome by creative genius. See T. Waldman, ‘Shadows of Uncertainty’: Clausewitz’s Timeless Analysis of Chance in War,’ Defence Studies, 10:3 (2010), pp. 336-68. [7] A. McCullough, ‘The Looming Swarm,’ Air Force Magazine (2019). [8] C. James, Cultural amnesia: Necessary memories from history and the arts, First Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007). #organisationalculture #RoyalAustralianAirForce #AustralianDefence #AustralianDefenceForce #ManeouvreWarfare

#BookReview: “Why all this fuss about airplanes for the Army? I thought we already had one!” In this piece, Carl Rhodes reviews the new book ‘At the Dawn of Airpower’ and explores what it was like to integrate an entirely new class of technology into military operations and thinking – and how we might learn from it in this century. With questions around where to place new capabilities in existing organisations, to dealing with the political fallout from test failures, the initial coming of age of airpower was not straightforward and, as Rhodes points out, was highly reliant on how people worked together to bring about a wholesale revolution in the way military force was composed. Laurence M. Burke II’s At the Dawn of Airpower conveys the complex history associated with the integration of airplanes into the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps. The book covers the decade between the Wright brothers’ first manned flight and the U.S. entry into World War I. The work heavily leverages Burke’s doctoral thesis and fills an apparent gap in academic research about U.S. military airpower prior to the First World War. Before proceeding further with this review, I need to make a confession. I am an engineer by training with two and a half decades of experience in defence policy. In a recent New York Times review of naval history, Ian W. Toll states that working as a historian is “like a spinach-eating competition in which the only possible prize is another helping of fresh, steaming vegetables.” In this context, I am clearly not a vegetarian, nor do I habitually eat a great deal of spinach. However, as someone who has read extensively on technology and airpower, this book provides a detailed history and is thoroughly referenced (unlike another recent popular book on airpower in World War II which shall not be named). It was also a fascinating and enjoyable read. While the book focuses on military innovation, Burke chooses to forego innovation frameworks as its methodological foundation. He instead leverages Actor/Network Theory (ANT), a method often used in the history of technology. This theory assumes that change results from the interactions of a variety of actors, which might include decision makers, advocates, converts to new ideas or even the hardware needed to demonstrate new concepts. The interactions of these actors form a network, which together may advance or hold back incorporation of new technology or, in a similar fashion, concepts for using that technology. This ANT methodology is useful in understanding the complex story of how three services approached the initial incorporation of aircraft into their force structure. There is enough content for at least two books here, one focused on Army history and a second on the Navy and Marines. Chapters in Burke’s work alternate between the story of the Army and that of the Navy and Marines, with each chapter covering two to four years of the decade. A pair of additional chapters examine interservice linkages at the beginning and second half of the decade. Such linkages were especially important at the individual aviator level in the early years but became more important at higher levels over time when coordination on issues around science and technology increased in importance. The short Prologue does a good job setting the stage prior to 1907, describing key events associated with modern U.S. flight research in the late 1800s. Ideas around how future aircraft might be employed in warfare were also being developed prior to 1900. In 1898, five years before the Wright brothers’ famous flight at Kitty Hawk, a Joint board examined the feasibility of flying machines in conflict. Guidance for the board’s work came from Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time. The board judged that Samuel Langley’s Aerodrome, a leading technology advancing towards manned flight, could eventually carry a man and might be useful as a limited means for reconnaissance, communications or dropping high explosives from a great height. Early on, many in the Navy didn’t see much utility in airplanes. As a result, it was the Army who invested in early development and construction of Langley’s manned flying machine. The investment failed to pay off in spectacular fashion, with two crashes of the manned Aerodrome prior to flight in public events a couple of months apart. After these failures, sentiment in the public and in Congress turned against funding additional work. Because of this backlash, the Army required a flying test as part of its first aircraft acquisition requirements. This and other events delayed delivery of its first aircraft, a Wright Military Flyer, to 1909. This interaction, described in much greater detail in the book, is an early case study that highlights how complex interactions between individuals in various military organisations, aircraft developers, Congress and the successes and failures of various aircraft designs lead to delays in incorporating new technology. An unnamed congressman in 1911, capturing the attitude of the time, was supposedly overheard saying about funding “Why all this fuss about airplanes for the Army? I thought we already had one!” Organisationally, the Army and Navy both struggled with where to place these aircraft in their respective organisations. The Army eventually placed aircraft under the Signal Corps, a good initial match given the Corps’ responsibilities for collection and dissemination of information. While this allowed aircraft to quickly advance their abilities in reconnaissance and communications, growth in other mission areas (including bombing and other offensive missions) proved challenging. The Navy, with its more decentralised structure, didn’t have an obvious initial home for aviation and initially placed airplanes under its Bureau of Navigation. Naval airpower grew more slowly as it never found a logical home in the Navy’s organisation of the time, even after being moved under the newly founded Chief of Naval Operations in 1915. Technology associated with airplanes advanced quickly during the decade. In 1910 and 1911, naval airpower firsts included flying an aircraft off a modified ship deck using a catapult, landing an aircraft on a modified ship deck and landing a “hydroaeroplane” on the water near a ship and later hoisting it onboard. Another key development involved the transition from rear-engined aircraft (pushers), where the engine had the disastrous side effect of crushing the crew during a crash, to safer aircraft with an engine in front of the crew. Other advances included aeronautical compasses (that wouldn’t be affected by an engine’s electrical system or vibrations), radios for communications (initially limited to sending information, due to the size and weight of receivers) and bombsights for both hand-dropped and mechanically released explosives. Demonstrations were also conducted around firing machine guns and other weapons from the air. As the technology advanced, the U.S. military struggled to incorporate these new technologies into operations. Training of military aviators was a critical early need and was initially conducted onsite at the aircraft builders of the day: Wright and Curtiss. Early disputes over intellectual property meant that the control schemes for aircraft from the two manufacturers were quite different for many years. This meant that pilots trained on one company’s controls couldn’t learn to fly the other company’s aircraft. Specific qualifications for being a “military aviator” also had to be developed and, later, military training centres were built to qualify pilots in each of the services. In terms of doctrine, very little was done to examine how U.S. airpower might be best employed and integrated with other forces. Flying at this time was a dangerous endeavour. As a result, most aviators were more focused on survival as compared to developing airpower employment concepts. As Burke notes, new officers assigned to training during this decade only slightly outpaced losses due to death, reassignment, and withdrawal for personal reasons. While aircraft conducted limited tests with bombs and machine guns, tactics and doctrine for such operations were never developed. Neither the Army nor the Navy leadership had interest in the offensive uses of aircraft at the time. The limited payloads associated with early aircraft meant that they simply couldn’t deliver much firepower and, organisationally, both services were more interested in reconnaissance roles for airpower. The military learned valuable lessons about airpower in U.S. operations against Mexico in 1914-1916. The Navy deployed two planes, by ship, to the Mexican port of Veracruz in 1914 in support of its landing force. This led to the realisation that the Curtiss seaplanes (also known as “flying boats”) couldn’t take off or land in heavy seas. As a result, it was recommended that future naval aircraft be designed to operate off a ship’s deck rather than taking off and landing on the water. Army aviation assets, deployed as part of the 1916 Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa’s forces, quickly discovered that its Curtiss JN-3 aircraft weren’t operationally useful in the Chihuahuan Desert. The desert is roughly 5,000 feet above sea level, near the JN-3 operational ceiling, limiting their ability to effectively perform reconnaissance in and around the nearby mountains. The requirements for future Army aircraft would need to account for such environments. The U.S. was also able to take advantage of valuable lessons from the European experience at the start of World War I. George Owen Squier, military attaché to London, sent back detailed reports about how the British were training, organising and equipping their Royal Flying Corps. Navy attachés in London, Paris and Berlin sent similar reports based on their observations. While such reports were circulated widely to the General Staff and strongly influenced leadership thinking about the utility of aircraft in bombing and artillery spotting, this same information never made it to aviation schools where it could have influenced training and doctrine development. By April 1917, when the United States formally entered World War I, each of the services had an established and growing aviation force and had started to learn to integrate aircraft with other forces. This is less than 8 years after the U.S. received its first military aircraft, quite an achievement when thinking about today’s development, acquisition and force integration timelines. However, in 1917 the U.S. also found itself woefully behind other European powers in aviation technology, doctrine, and training. As Burke notes, “Neither the services nor the manufacturers in the United States had an aircraft even on the drawing board that could hold its own in aerial combat as it existed on the Western Front.” Because of this fact, the U.S. found itself “flat footed” when entering the war in Europe. Some who become closely associated with airpower later in their careers make interesting cameos in this book. In 1913, prior to having any flight experience, Capt. William “Billy” Mitchell testified to a House Committee that aircraft would be of most use for reconnaissance against large units and that aircraft should remain under the Army Signal Corps as “The offensive value of [the airplane] has not been proved.” When Mitchell eventually takes up flying in 1916, we learn that several sources describe his student flying as “erratic.” We also learn about Second Lieutenant Henry “Hap” Arnold’s aviation training in 1911 with Orville and Wilbur Wright and his continued involvement with airpower during this time. In summary, I found this “serving of spinach” to be fascinating and delightful and look forward to consuming more vegetables in the future. Reading this book also reminded me that many challenges which delay the integration of new military technology persist even today. My personal research over the past two decades has included a range of issues around remote and autonomous systems. Questions about where such systems should reside on the organisational charts, what level of funding new systems should receive, how to doctrinally employ new technology and what training operators of these systems should receive endure to this day and answers aren’t being developed quickly. Let’s all hope that we can do more than just “observe” the historic lessons captured in Burke’s history to help better incorporate new technologies like space, cyber and autonomous systems. Should major conflict erupt in the Indo-Pacific over the coming years, we simply can’t afford to find ourselves flat footed. Carl Rhodes is founder of Robust Policy, a Canberra firm providing high-quality analysis and policy solutions. Previously, he served 25 years with RAND Corporation including a term as director of RAND Australia.

Editorial Note: On 11 April 2019, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation is holding a seminar examining high-intensity operations and sustaining self-reliance. The aim of the seminar, building on previous seminars and series looking at #jointstrike and #highintensitywar, is to establish a common understanding of the importance and challenges of sustaining a self-reliant Australian Defence Force in a challenging environment. In support of the seminar, The Central Blue and Logistics in War will be publishing a series of articles. In this article, David Beaumont examines how we sustain self-reliance. Discussions about self-reliance, like many other conversations among defence planners, rarely begins with a conversation on supply and support. Most will end with it. The ability of a military to conduct operations independently of another’s aid is intrinsically linked to the capacity to move, supply and support that force. It would be a mistake to think that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) can go into a future war, especially one that tests the upper limits of its capabilities if not a national crisis, without the support of others. At a simplistic level, many of our weapons, ammunition and components are acquired from other nations, or as we see with major capital programs, produced with others. We complement our forces – in all domains – with discrete logistics capabilities provided by others. Even in those times where the mantle of coalition leadership has fallen upon the ADF’s shoulders, as we saw with regional peacemaking and keeping operations of the last twenty years, the ADF has been supported from other quarters.  What is important for us to understand, now, is what the limits to self-reliance are. Much of the conversation about logistics and its impact on national aspirations to self-reliance is coached in monumental terms and issues. National fuel supplies, prioritised sovereign defence industries and national manufacturing capacity, economic resilience in an era of globalisation; these contemporary, popularised, topics give us pause to consider major national security concerns in a time of increasing strategic competition. They have been topics of interest to Australian governments and strategists for decades, beyond the period in which self-reliance was ensconced in the strategic doctrine of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, and to the interwar period where lessons from the First World War reminded them to be prepared for national mobilisation. As important as our relationships with like-minded nations might be, there has always been a niggling doubt in the back of our minds compelling us to prepare for logistics independence. As the Second World War proved, even in a coalition conflict there will be times the ADF will need to ‘go it alone’ and sustain itself as our allies resources are drawn elsewhere. The ADF, its partners in academia, industry and government, are at a point where the discussion has to get to the specifics of the problem. Moreover, this discussion must tread into the deep, dark, recesses of Defence modernisation with questions asked as to how long our impressive new capabilities, from the RAAF’s F-35 to the Army’s Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle, can endure on the battlefield of the future when our friends are far away. This article will briefly touch upon some areas which the professionally interested will have to tread. An Australian Army soldier Corporal ‘M’ conducts a stock take of ballistic helmets at the Special Operations Logistics Squadron quartermaster store. (Source: Australian Department of Defence) Logistics has long been regarded as a crucial component of military capability, and the supply and support given to armed forces a major constituent of operational success. Logistics constraints and strengths can shape strategy, determine the form and means of operations, and if given nothing more than a passing glance by military commanders and civilian planners, will prevent combat forces from ever achieving their full potential in the air, and on the sea and land. As we seek to answer the question, ‘what can we achieve on our own?’, a really difficult question to answer, solutions to our logistics problems and concerns must be front and centre. A suborned view of logistics in this discussion about self-reliance is way out of step with the strategic reality facing the ADF. In engaging with this reality, we might see that logistics is, in fact, a strategic capability in its own right. What are the big logistics challenges to confirming our limits and freedoms of action in terms of self-reliance then? I have already mentioned some of the primary national security and strategic concerns above; critical issues for Australia to resolve in the coming years. Without necessarily delving too deep into national security infrastructure, what is arguably more important are the political and policy levers which set in motion the national endeavours that ultimately manifest in military logistics. In recent years we have seen defence industry policy renewed alongside strategic policy, we have seen the Services develop close and valuable ties with industry partners, and we have seen a commitment to sovereign defence industries. Only time will tell whether this will be enough in a time of significant crisis. If the strategic competition continues, it may be a time to seriously question what full or partial industrial mobilisation might entail for the nation – or more importantly how to actually do it. Many years ago the Minister for Defence held a ‘War Book’ which set the ground rules for the process of mobilisation at the highest national levels; perhaps a new one is needed if we are serious about the prospects for high-intensity conflict in the future. At the military strategic level, the ADF’s self-reliance will be measured in the time it can sustain operations without replenishment from other quarters.  If it lacks the warstocks or support capabilities to sustain its materiel, the capacity of the global supply chain to support the operational requirements will be crucial. There are some commodities essential for our way of war that we cannot produce nationally such as precision weapons and ammunition. The problem for Defence is that it is very difficult to determine how self-reliant the ADF might be while global supply-chains are opaque and Australia lacks the levers to intervene in global markets directly. It may be that in a time of crisis traditional boundaries such as intellectual property rights will need to be challenged, industry capacity seconded to defence interests, and projects redirected in new directions at very short notice (see here). At the very least ADF and industry should discuss how industry ‘scales’ in parallel with any expansion of the fielded force. It is impossible to talk about coordinating this activity without commenting on the nature of strategic logistics control in the Defence Organisation. Because the problems are large, the ways in which concerns on self-reliance will be addressed will invariably be pan-organisational in nature. Commander Joint Logistics Command might be the CDF’s ‘strategic J4’ or key logistics commander, but he or she partners with the Capability, Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Estate and Infrastructure Group, the Services and others within what’s called the ‘Defence Logistics Enterprise’. Each organisation naturally has a different perspective as to what ‘self-reliance’ means, and there is always a risk that Defence will have difficulty identifying where its logistics risks and opportunities truly lie in this context. Quite clearly the analysis of what the ADF’s ‘logistics limits’ are requires a coherent effort with solutions achieved through mutually supporting activities conducted across the organisation. This may mean we reinvigorate the idea of ‘national support’ as a collective process in which industry and the military can work together to support operations; where national industry support to military operations is included at a conceptual level. The strategic level challenges to self-reliance might fundamentally shape whether the ADF could perform in the way intended, but we cannot forget the challenges to operational self-reliance either. The most significant operational-level challenge to self-reliance, I argue, is with respect to strategic mobility. The ADF regularly seeks operational-level support in terms of intelligence and a wide range of capabilities that a military of our size simply could not realistically produce. Perhaps there will be a time in which very long-distance fires will overcome the geography between an adversary and us, but until they do to a level that satisfies the desired military outcome strategic mobility capabilities will continue to be critical to the ADF. Until then, our strategic mobility will be critical to achieving a persistent response (whether that be on land or at sea) to an offshore threat. Most of our partners declare their own paucity in strategic mobility capacity which suggests that even if our future conflicts are shared, we might still need to invest heavily in order to meet our own requirements. On top of the mobility capabilities themselves, the aircraft and the ships and the contracted support we can muster from the nation, we cannot forget the ‘small’ enablers that support a deployed force. In our recent campaigns in the Middle-east, we have been heavily dependent upon our coalition partners for the subsistence of our forces. There is a real risk that our operational habits may have created an environment which gives false expectations of the logistics risk resident within the ADF, especially when it comes to conducting operations without coalition support. As the Services look to their future force structure, it will serve them well to scrutinise not only those capabilities essential for basic standards of living, but the widespread of logistics capabilities are essential complements to their major platforms. These include over-the-shore logistics capabilities for amphibious operations, expeditionary base capabilities as well those elements of the force that receive, integrate and onforward soldiers, sailors and airmen and women into the operational area. With the newly formed Joint Capabilities Group, the ADF has a significant opportunity to address these operational challenges to self-reliance comprehensively. You do not have to deeply analyse Defence logistics to understand that self-reliance is underpinned by the ADF’s – if not the nation's – capacity to sustain and support its operations. The comments here are certainly not revelatory, nor are the allusions to the limits of ADF’s capability particularly surprising. For the ADF to be effective in a high-intensity conflict, there is still a way to go yet, irrespective of whether it goes to way within a coalition or not. There is every chance that even if the ADF does deploy as part of a coalition, it will still be necessary for it to have a capacity to support itself. It is understandably important that we have a conversation about the limits to self-reliance in the current time of peace and think deeply about establishing the policy infrastructure and organisational arrangements that will enable us to make good judgements on what the ADF can or cannot do alone. Without doing so, we risk logistics capability being revealed as a constraint on ADF operations, not a source of opportunity and the well from which the joint force draws its strength to fight. David Beaumont writes regularly at www.logisticsinwar.com (T: @davidblogistics). The views here are his own. #AustralianDefenceForce #Logistics